Aral Sea Case Study Flashcards
Where is the Aral Sea?
The Aral Sea is located in between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in central Asia.
What is the Aral Sea?
It’s a landlocked basin. The Aral Sea was once the world’s fourth largest inland saline body of water with an area of 68,000 km2.
What happened in 1918?
In 1918, it became part of the Soviet Union.
They saw potential for farmland in surrounding desert- and usd the two big rivers flowing into the sea, Amu Darya and Syr Darya.
They did this to try to increase food production and be self sufficient.
The main crop grown was cotton- Cotton does not grow naturally in the region, therefore it needs vast amounts of water to irrigate the crop.
Centrally planned economy- decisions were made in the centre by the government.
What was the main problem?
The area of the sea has decreased dramatically over 40 years because of the over abstraction of the rivers feeding into the Aral Sea. This has meant the area and volume of the sea has decreased.
Irrigation of the desert meant that the Aral Sea was not being supplied by rivers any more. The sea is an open system with inputs of river water balanced by outputs of water vapour. The loss of river water led to the sea shrinking as a result of continued evaporation.
Why is the sea disappearing?
The sea is disappearing because the input of the sea has been depleted (rivers) and the remaining water is still evaporating.
This evaporation has increased the salinity of the sea as the salt is left behind.
Impacts on human health:
Stagnant water
Diseases such as cancer, anaemia and tuberculosis occur have become much more common. Infant mortality is 30 times higher than it used to be
Lack of freshwater
Drinking water heavily polluted with salt, cotton fertilisers and pesticides.
A toxic dust of salt from dried up sea bed and agro-chemicals blows around and is inhaled by locals.
People’s diet has become impoverished because of the lack of fish and difficulty in growing fresh vegetables.
Immune systems become weaker and therefore people are more vulnerable to diseases.w
The future…
Work is being done to restore in part the North Aral Sea by building a dam wall to hold the water in place.
